BY SARIKA BANSAL Steve Forman, one of Ramapo High School’s assistant principals, was stunned to find on a recent morning that his town’s sectarian feud had spilled into his school. On the blackboard in an empty classroom, someone had scribbled: “IT’S THE JEWS’ FAULT.” Forman immediately knew the anonymous student was not referring to the…
One of the first things you might notice about Monrovia is the barbed wire. It grows like vines from the top of the salt-scarred concrete battlements that ring anything of official value or importance, showing up everywhere in an endless catalogue of styles. Shards of…
BY STEPHEN SCHABER On 14th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues in Union Square, across from Jason’s Jewelry & Diamonds and next door to a Western Union, you will find Bourbon Coffee, a large café with a larger mission. This upscale retailer of signature Rwandan…
BY ASHOKA MUKPO On a drizzly day in mid-April, about seven teenagers sit in a cluttered Washington Heights high school classroom, waiting to hear the recruitment pitch for a local…
BY NICOLE SCHILIT The 100 men packed tightly in the barren room suffered from different degrees of malnourishment, a visible marker that distinguished how long each had spent in the…
BY MICHAEL LARSON Staff Sergeant Joseph Pratt arrived at Forward Operating Base Tiger in the middle of August 2005 for an inglorious assignment but one on which America’s exit strategy…
BY ANNA KORDUNSKY Sangar Rahimi, an Afghan reporter who works for The New York Times in Kabul, likes to be the first to arrive on the scene. In early October…
By REBECCA WEXLER The small American church group that arrived at the Port au Prince airport just days after the devastating 7.0 magnitude January earthquake had nothing but the best…
BY LAUREN SCHULZ In 1968, the Vietnam War was raging and so was Columbia University. Anti-war students ransacked the ROTC barracks and a year later, the program was banned from…
BY MONICA ADAME Denise, a powerful television anchorwoman, heard her smart phone beeped. It was April 10. “HELP, the town of Uruachi in Chihuahua is under siege by 150 hit…
BY KARA SUNDBY When my father hit 50, he didn’t buy a sports car or leave my mother for a younger woman. He weathered his midlife crisis in his own…
BY ASHOKA MUKPO In the exquisite Kashmiri city of Srinagar, Himalayan snow peaks tower over glacial lakes, and at night the Islamic call to prayer drifts lazily through luxurious gardens…
BY ASHOKA MUKPO In the summer of 2006, Army Sergeant Devin F. Muir departed from his base near Al-Hillah for a patrol in the sweltering heat of central Iraq. A…
BY MIMI WELLS Ayesha was thirteen years old when her parents gave her to a forty-year old man to settle a blood debt between their families in accordance…
BY MIMI WELLS Specialist Mathew “Doc” Kenney sat in the backseat of the third heavily armored MRAP, near the window. It was around midnight on Easter Sunday, 2009, and the…
BY NICOLE SCHILIT Maya Paley’s cell phone rings frequently but when she answers the call the person on the other line will immediately hang up. Instead of getting annoyed Maya…
BY LAUREN SCHULZ NEW YORK – I met Allen Striffler for the first time on the steps of the New York Athletic Club in the fall of 2009. We had…
BY ASHOKA MUKPO In the exquisite Kashmiri city of Srinagar, Himalayan snow peaks tower over glacial lakes, and at night the Islamic call to prayer drifts lazily through luxurious gardens…
BY ASHOKA MUKPO In the summer of 2006, Army Sergeant Devin F. Muir departed from his base near Al-Hillah for a patrol in the sweltering heat of central Iraq. A…
SARIKA BANSAL Finding the perfect organizational partner can be tricky. Human rights groups are no exception to this. To be effective, they often must work with other groups, including NGOs,…
By Sarika Bansal Cramped in a sweltering college dormitory in South India, Dr. Vemuri Venkat Ramanadham—then known as “Lecturer Ramanadham”—and fervently debated the Indian independence movement with more than 50…
By Mónica Adame I met Gaspar Orozco during my first event as public relations coordinator for the Mexican Consul General in New York almost three years ago. Our boss, the…
By Mónica Adame “I had been at the base for about two days when a group of three men instructed me to enter a room. They forced me to lie…
By Mónica Adame The first time armed gang members threatened Daniela Azpilcueta, 27, a resident of Monterrey, in the Northern state of Nuevo Leon, Mexico, she immediately tuned to Twitter.…
By ANNA KORDUNSKY Galya and her family had been living in the bomb shelter under the ruins of her apartment building for two weeks when unexpected visitors came down the…
